


can we talk about last night, quarter to midnight?

by enjcltaire



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Again it's not NSFW but it's steamy I suppose, Dom/sub Undertones, First Kiss, It's the middle of the night, M/M, Making Out, They're in a cupboard, What could possibly happen, they're gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27821449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjcltaire/pseuds/enjcltaire
Summary: When the Captain said there had been a great deal of noise going on at night, illicit meetings with Lieutenant Havers in the cupboard between both their rooms wasn’t quite what he had meant. After all, it wasn’t quite the disruption to his sleep that he had blamed the rest of the regiment for.
Relationships: The Captain/Lieutenant Havers (Ghosts TV 2019)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 91





	can we talk about last night, quarter to midnight?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends! Today I offer you another Ghosts fic because I am absolutely obsessed with my ARMY GAYS. Thank you all so, so much for the love on my last fic, I really appreciated all the lovely comments and I'm so grateful. This fandom is lovely. I hope you enjoy this one. Title is from a song by The Shires called About Last Night. I really like the way this turned out and I hope you do too, please let me know what you think! Katie x
> 
> PS I was going to write something else and I started watching Redding Weddy because I couldn't remember a specific detail and when Cap started talking about noise at night this just came to me

When the Captain said there had been a great deal of noise going on at night, illicit meetings with Lieutenant Havers in the cupboard between both their rooms wasn’t quite what he had meant. After all, it wasn’t quite the disruption to his sleep that he had blamed the rest of the regiment for.

It had started innocently. Looking back, there was no way he could deny that there had been an attraction between himself and his second-in-command long before any of this…business – for want of a better word – started. It had been right there in the prolonged eye contact, in Havers’ subtly sarcastic and ever witty comments that one would mistake for a jokingly flirtatious conversation between a married couple, and in the way the knots in the Captain’s stomach tightened and his insides seemed to do a dance every time his junior walked into a room. But neither of them had seen it. Not the Captain of the Button House regiment who was so uptight and meticulous about control, and as far as he knew, not the intelligent and able Lieutenant, the only person who the Captain would ever trust with the knowledge that he was perhaps a little more vulnerable than he appeared to the rest of the soldiers.

He had woken up in the night one day with a jolt, so abruptly that one might have assumed that a thunderclap or flashing lightning had disturbed his sleep. But there was nothing, and it wasn’t an unusual occurrence for the Captain. He was stressed – there was a war on, of course, and he was responsible for commanding a regiment of soldiers, all of them who looked to him as a leader. He could not possibly show weakness. Yes, it was exactly that that kept him awake: tossing and turning and thinking about failing the people that were supposed to see him as an example. And worst of all, failing his Lieutenant.

Lieutenant Havers. He always seemed to be in the back of the Captain’s mind, or more often the front. It was a feeling he could never manage to shake, the niggling anxiety about what the younger man thought about him, whether he liked him. It wasn’t that the Lieutenant gave him reason to doubt the validity of their friendship. He seemed ever more gentle with his superior than with anyone else, as though he knew of the Captain’s incessant worries about being good enough. There was nothing that he could put his finger on. But still, the feeling was ceaseless, and it had caused him sleepless nights on more occasions than he wished to acknowledge.

It had been what seemed like an eternity sitting in bed, pacing about the same room in the dark, when the Captain unbolted his door and set off down the corridor. There had been no objective, nothing more than a change of scenery that would inevitably be fruitless. And it was against his better judgement as he silently walked down the hallway, his face screwing up with every creaky floorboard (although it was true that there would be nobody but himself to reprimand him if he was caught). He stopped in front of the nondescript faceless doors at the opposite end of the corridor, leaning back against the cold wood panels of the wall with a sigh. It was no use.

The sound of a door unbolting and opening almost made him jump out of his skin.

Just across from the Captain, Lieutenant Havers’ face appeared from a crack in the door of his room as he cautiously looked up and down the corridor, his gaze settling on the Captain’s face. His eyes widened and for a moment he looked as though he would simply disappear back behind the door, before he hesitantly stepped out.

“What the bally hell do you think you’re playing at, Lieutenant? Do you know what time it is?” the Captain whispered, gesturing vaguely and suddenly feeling increasingly self-conscious about his state of undress. To be seen without uniform by anyone, let alone a man of a lower rank such as Havers, was improper to say the least.

“I could ask you the same question,” the Lieutenant replied, a hint of amusement in his voice coupled with almost undetectable anxiety as he looked up and down the hallway again to ensure nobody was listening.

The Captain swallowed. He had a point.

“Well…are you quite alright, man?” He could find little else to say. He was standing in the middle of a sleeping army base in the dead of night with another man, and somehow he gathered there wasn’t a textbook conversation for such a circumstance.

“I’m fine. I couldn’t sleep,” Havers said, shivering slightly. “It’s freezing out here.” His eyes scanned across the darkness of the corridor, falling upon a cupboard a few feet away. “Come on,” he whispered, tiptoeing over to open its door.

The Captain stood staring at him, open-mouthed, again gesturing randomly with his arms as if to articulate his confusion. It simply wasn’t done – to be found conversing with another soldier at night in a hallway was one thing. To be found in a cupboard was something else entirely.

Lieutenant Havers rolled his eyes, a hint of a smile visible on his face at behaviour so typical of the Captain. “Do you want to freeze to death out here?”

Reluctantly the superior man obeyed, unable to deny the other man, scurrying to the cupboard in a manner quite unseemly of an army Captain, before shutting the door behind the both of them and fumbling for the light switch. There was a bumping of arms and legs, hastily muttered apologies and awkward laughs before the small room was illuminated and the Captain found himself sitting at a surprisingly close proximity to his Lieutenant. He cleared his throat.

“Well,” he murmured, his eyes fixating on the floor uncomfortably. Their knees were touching in a way that made warmth spread all the way across the Captain’s body and their fingertips were millimetres apart.

“Well indeed,” the Lieutenant returned, looking at the other man. “I suppose I ought to ask what on earth you’re doing out of your room at this hour?”

A small, humourless laugh escaped the Captain’s lips at that and he sighed. “Couldn’t sleep.” There was a pause as he thought about how much to confess. “Never seem to be able to these days.”

“Why not? You must be tired enough, all that shouting you do,” Havers asked with a gentle nudge. There was undoubtedly a tinge of playfulness to his tone, but the Captain recognised his innate kindness and genuine desire to understand what was eating away at the Captain.

He shrugged. “Too much going on,” he admitted quietly. “Too much.”

A silence stretched out between them, one that neither man felt the need to break. Not until the Captain felt the Lieutenant’s hand rest hesitantly on his thigh. He looked up, surprised but not necessarily alarmed at the contact. “Is this…is this okay?” the other man asked him, slight concern in his eyes. The Captain nodded, unable to find the right words to tell him that yes, yes it was okay, and he thought at that moment that he would be quite happy for the Lieutenant to embrace him right there in the cupboard sitting on top of a stack of goodness knows what.

“I say,” he found himself saying suddenly, straightening up and clearing his throat again. “Havers, are you…would you…” the Captain trailed off, abandoning speech and instead carefully laying his head on the other man’s shoulder, his heart beating faster than it ever had before as he waited for the Lieutenant to recoil in shock and disgust.

But he didn’t. There was no movement, except the subtle movement of his head as he rested it gently against the Captain’s. Silence again, comfortable yet somehow deafening with everything that had been left unsaid. Heavy with the inexplicable desire for the man next to him in the Captain’s stomach that had unfolded and left him feeling almost delirious, dizzy with the thought that they were this close and in some way this was everything that he had wanted but had been unable to put into words since the day they met, the day he knew that this man was someone unlike anyone else he’d ever met before.

Their faces were centimetres apart, so close the Captain could feel the Lieutenant’s warm breath on his cheek, and they were seemingly inching closer by the second until their lips were almost touching. And then the Lieutenant’s fingers were at his jaw, under his chin, and he was whispering so quietly the words were barely audible – “Can I?”

The Captain nodded, and ever so gently the Lieutenant closed the gap between their mouths, pressing a firm kiss to the other man’s lips.

It was like the rest of the world had disappeared in that moment, and there was nothing for a minute as the Captain slowly reached out to put his arms round the other man, his hands touching his shoulders and the warmth of his back under the thin fabric of his clothes. The Lieutenant groaned quietly against his lips and pulled him closer, pushing him backwards against whatever it was that was in the cupboard with them. Neither of them cared to notice.

The two barely parted for breath in what felt like seconds and hours all at once, the Captain ending up almost flat without realising as the Lieutenant kissed him more and more intently, one hand in his hair and the other lovingly stroking the skin just under the hem of his shirt. Eventually Havers sat up, breathing out with a sigh, followed by the Captain, whose blush was unmistakable even in the dim light of a storage cupboard. Their fingers were tangled and the Lieutenant gave his superior’s a comforting squeeze.

“I think…well, I mean to say,” the Captain began, before the other man pressed a quick kiss to his lips, silencing him. He smiled.

“See you in the morning.”

Yes, they would be doing this again.


End file.
